


Secret Garden Roses

by AlyssiaInWonderland



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, Leonard goes to Vulcan as a teen, M/M, Mild Angst, Present Tense, but not much i swear!!, its just very fluffy and cute ok, spones - Freeform, with a sprinkle of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 09:45:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13587471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlyssiaInWonderland/pseuds/AlyssiaInWonderland
Summary: Leonard is 17 and engaged when he and his family move to Vulcan. At first he is resentful and upset, even more so when his fiancee breaks off the engagement. Then he meets the half-Vulcan boy next door, named Spock, and from that moment on, everything changes.A kind of AU focussing on Spones as it develops from teenagers to adults on the Enterprise.





	Secret Garden Roses

When Leonard's family first moves to Vulcan, he is too busy resenting everything about the move, how it removes him from his fiancée Jocelyn, but he goes because he wants to study and be the best doctor he can be, and because his father is there and wants him to learn xenobiology from somewhere that isn't Earth. He spends a lot of his time ignoring his neighbours - the Vulcan ambassador apparently - and calling Jocelyn, until one day he calls and she tells him he's been away too long, they're done. After that everything is a blur of learning and pretending he doesn't enjoy the warmth of the sun through the windows of their house.

It all changes when his father and mother are at a dinner, and the woman from next door knocks frantically. She is human and this shouldn't surprise him, but he's become unaccustomed to such bright emotion on the expressions of anyone save his family. He follows her and finds a boy, about his age, or a little older perhaps, sitting calmly and meditating with a knife through his hand. 

After some choice swear words and telling the kid off for meditating - to which he responds with something about slowing blood flow or some other vulcan voodo - he fixes up his hand, careful to only touch gently and when necessary.

They glare at each other - the boy, Spock, because he didn't need help, and Leonard exactly because Spock didn't seek it until his mother found him trying to get into her sewing drawer.

Spock and Leonard somehow always end up in the same place after that - at school, or both out in the garden at the same time. Slowly and cautiously they become friends, helping each other with flowers in the dirt and studying - Spock says he is quick for a human, and Leonard says he is actually licensed to wield hypos now so Spock better watch his damn mouth.

Spock does watch Leonard's mouth then, and just like that the warm bubble of friendship gives a little, igniting with something unfamiliar and exciting and terrifying. Suddenly Leonard is thinking of Spock's lips, the planes of his smooth skin, and he no longer bothers to care what Jocelyn might be doing, because he hasn't thought about her for months. They're awkward now and they blush whenever they accidentally touch, and it feels like they are falling apart from the effort of not spiralling together.

They spend a lot of time together, more than before because this time they are alone. Their hands touch for the first time since their first meeting, and Spock shivers just like before, except now the shivers are pleasure not pain. Their blushes burn their cheeks like the sun at noon and there is something wonderful in this quiet, illicit joy they find in each other. The garden soon becomes theirs, the space at the back with a lower fence is where Leonard likes to alarm Spock by clambering over it, all coursing excitement and tangled limbs and grinning, bashfully displayed muscle as he tumbles into Spock's garden and his arms. Spock deigns to scale the fence occasionally and he lands next to Leonard sinuous and cat-like. Leonard thinks Spock is too elegant for him, but Spock just insults him until they're smiling again and they remember that they belong.

Time passes and Leonard whiles away hours with Spock, as they grow into their gangly limbs and start to plan for the future. Leonard teaches Spock how humans kiss and Spock dismantles the fence at the back of the garden. They sit back to back sometimes, holding hands and staring at the sky, talking of where they might study and feeling the comforting sensation of leaning on each other with easy trust. Leonard wishes he could stand with Spock against the VSA, but he thinks that might only make it worse. And so he practises his Southern curses until Spock is smiling his laughter and he's tingling and light, because Spock's happiness has become his own somewhere along the line.

They are both intelligent, and this makes it easy to hide, but when T'Pring sees them holding hands no amount of indignation or implicatory not-lies can rescue them. This is when Leonard hears about Pon-Farr, the closely guarded secret so private that even in his studies of medicine he hasn't been allowed to know of it. Spock wants to break his bond with T'Pring, but for the first time in a long while Leonard realises that he is the one who has to be responsible - and so they argue, bitter and sharp barbs that sting with a poison that has never before been present in their disagreements. They retreat and the next day the fence at the back of the garden is repaired, and Leonard feels the drying paint under his fingertips and tries to think 'good'.

When Leonard hears that Spock has refused the VSA and has made it into Starfleet he visits Spock's house for the first time in months. He stumbles over the familiar steps and bursts impatiently into Spock's room where he is staring impassively at his acceptance letter, and he doesn't even flinch as Leonard shouts and rails against the stone of Spock's resolve. It's like he is he the tide battering against an unforgiving cliff, except he's not got enough time or patience to salvage this chaos into something resembling hope.

After he's worn his voice hoarse and Spock has silently blinked at him more times than he could be bothered to count, he goes and sits at the back of the garden, feeling the sun on his back and the warm earth under him, as he keeps his back firmly to the fence. If he closes his eyes he can almost pretend that it's Spock's back against his. He comes inside an hour later and submits his application to Starfleet. Space is disease and darkness and danger, and he'll be damned twice over before he lets Spock go up in a tin can and die because his doctor got his xenobiology degree on earth and can't tell a heart from a liver when it comes to Vulcans and their damned biology.

Leonard almost lets himself enjoy Starfleet Academy. The sun of Earth is far too cold, and he pretends it's the Southern in him. He finds it jarring to speak in Standard and not Vulcan for several months, alarmed to hear the drawling accent spring from his lips as if no time has passed since he was a teenager hating every thought of an alien world. But he, tentatively, has friends, or at least the one, in his roommate Jim. He thinks the kid is ridiculous and more than a little brilliant, even if he keeps trying to get Leonard to 'open up'. Leonard thinks back to Spock every time Jim mentions love, and it's hard to keep his expression from holding a bitter twist. Spock has no issue with such lapses of control, keeping himself occupied with work. Leonard likes to pretend that he's only in the labs because he wants to be the best, and in a way it is true. Except it's just a side-benefit, that the hours of lab study mean he sometimes sees a flash of pale green skin and perfectly neat dark hair.

Jim tells him he is pining, and he listens politely and then carries on just how he is, because he is perfectly fine, and no, he doesn't know what Jim means when he starts trying to set him up on dates and all of them have dark hair and brown eyes. It's only when Nyota says something as she's writing her linguistics essay and Leonard automatically corrects her pronunciation in Vulcan, that Jim backs off. Leonard isn't sure why so small a thing, such evidence that he maybe knew Spock from before, makes Jim hesitant, but he isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and in the end they all graduate together. Leonard takes his high scores and his determination and serves it up to Dr Boyce, and comes out with a gleaming guarantee for the Enterprise.

Jim is overjoyed, and Leonard lets himself feel a little triumph beneath the fear threatening to engulf him. On commissioning day, as they make their way to the transporters, Spock appears, follows him like a silent shadow and impresses his presence into Leonard's mind. He's so distracted by the unnerving, dizzying proximity that he forgets they're beaming aboard, and once he realises this his only recourse is to glare and snap at Spock's gentleness. Jim eyes them both critically, Spock impassive and Leonard flushed, and then they're away on a five-year mission and all Leonard can think is 'no going back' and 'does Spock still love me', so he hauls his carefully cultivated grouchiness and buries himself in his work.

Jim seems reluctant to let Spock and Leonard work together sometimes, because no matter what Leonard tries, something about the angle of Spock's brow or the twitching of his lips that nobody else quite notices is smug, invites his ire. Spock bounces all his energy back at him, unruffled, and somehow he feels like he did when they were younger, learning the taste of each other's lips, because Spock is not-smiling while his eyes glitter, and he is foolish and unable to look away. The tiny bubble of golden happiness resting in his chest starts to grow again, and he rejoices in the ways that even their jagged edges fit. Despite their inevitable teasing and disagreements, the only thing wrong with their work together is that it is quite so easy to work together at all. 

Eventually the crew gets used to their casual antagonism, and they find that perhaps they have finally reached a truce after all those years unable to express and resolve the complicated emotions that twisted around their peace because of T'Pring and Pon-Farr.

It lasts a good while, their words and silences growing deeper with meaning and intent, and sometimes when either of them are injured, their hands remember how their hearts feel and they press a Vulcan kiss to the other's shirt or skin. It's another secret, quiet thrill, though it makes him uneasy when the times are good, unsure how their boundaries work now they're fitting back together like they never should have been apart.

Leonard never knew that a day would come when he was glad for the knowledge and facts thrown in his face about Ponn-Farr and how a psi-null individual would struggle to provide Spock's needs during his time. That day is here, and Spock is ill, and neither of them want to explain it because the entire situation makes Spock feel helpless and Leonard feel like a young man still burning with his own inadequacy. Leonard makes Spock tell Jim, because there's no way in hell he's going to try and give his friend the Vulcan version of 'The Birds and the Bees'. Spock tilts his head and calls him illogical, and Leonard retorts that Spock can't judge because apparently his hormones are convinced that commandeering the Enterprise is a reasonable plan.

Being back on Vulcan feels just as strange as his return to Earth did, and the look Spock's grandmother sends him is unreadable and uncomfortably intense. When T'Pring brings up a challenge, Leonard wishes his boiling blood was still used to Vulcan's atmosphere, because vow or not he wants to somehow fight for Spock's life and he knows he can't start administering hypos because he's studied this, long before with salty tears hastily wiped off the PADD and a determination to at least be able to help in some way when the time came. Despite the situation, Leonard almost wants to roll his eyes that somehow Jim has ended up being the one to fight - of course it's Jim, because who else would be fool enough except his own love-struck self. He thinks as fast as he can, because this is his best friend and his not-quite-lover, and his heart breaks to see Spock fall for the deception for all that it is necessary.

Leonard can't resist teasing Spock for the joy he showed at Jim's being alive, and it's partly because it's automatic now after so long prickling at each other, and partly because he's seen that smile before and his mind is still half in their garden on Vulcan with the scent of dirt and roses resting heavily in the air. Their shoulders touch and linger a little too long for just-friends, and later when he's alone in his room Leonard lets his mind wander back in time, hoping with all his flawed human heart that perhaps they might make another place their own.

Spock comms him to meet him in the botany labs, for a project, and he rolls his eyes because only Spock would think nothing of sending such a request halfway through Beta shift when they all should be sleeping.

He's confronted by roses and soft lips smiling against his own, kisses and apologies filling the space between them, rushing forth like the first movement was the breaking of a dam. They learn more about each other still than they have before, and Leonard finds that a meld feels like calm and synchronicity and closeness, while Spock tenderly cultivates the invisible bond between them that has always fed their mutual understanding and now perhaps always will.

Surprisingly little changes between them, because they've always spent as many waking hours as possible in each other's company, and the familiar warmth of their relationship feels like coming home and exploration of new worlds all at the same time.

They don’t realise that their ebb and flow of verbal sparring has retreated into their bond until Chekov asks them each if they're alright, and in silent agreement Leonard grins and heckles Spock from his position standing by Jim's chair. Spock responds serenely, with mischief and loving fire flickering through their bond, and their match ends as it always was meant to, with Spock smiling his smug micro-expressions and Leonard airing his passion - and if they are each blushing softly from the spiralling warmth and leaping tenderness in their bond in those moments, that is nobody's business but their own.

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! So I originally wrote this randomly in a discord server I'm part of, so it's probably not the most coherent of pieces! I tried to edit it into sensical-ness, so hopefully that worked!
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> As ever, comments and kudos feed my dark soul and I am eternally grateful for them!!! <3
> 
> Have a lovely day, y'all!


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